"I just wanted a clean slate," laughed Jim Pavon, whose aunt Marjorie Timm died in 1975. "I just wanted to clear her name with the library."

The hardback copy of Rudyard Kipling's "Kim" was due back on Aug. 29, 1927, but no one in Pavon's family realized that it was an overdue library book.

"It's classic -- we all read it," Pavon said Friday. "It sat on a shelf or in a box for years. But I guess no one ever noticed that there was a little library card and sleeve on the back cover that said when it was due."

Pavon, who was born and raised in Oakland, said he recently found the book while looking through some old boxes after his wife died in February. It was only then that he noticed it was a library book.

"My aunt must have lent it to my mom, and then everyone forgot it was a library book," he said. "That book sat on my mom's shelf for decades" before she died.

When his mother moved from Oakland to Walnut Creek in 1979, she gave her son numerous items, including the book. It sat on a shelf in his home in Concord for years, but at some point his wife put it away in a box where it was forgotten.

"I took it out of the box thinking, 'This book has been in the family for years' and then noticed it's not ours," Pavon said.

Pavon, who has retired to Brentwood, took the book to the Oakland Main Library on May 24 and asked if there was still a Melrose Branch. He then got directions and took it there.

"The kid at the desk at Melrose shook his head and said, 'I'm sorry, sir, this book isn't in our computer.' I laughed and showed him that it was due in 1927," Pavon said.

Stunned library officials agreed to waive the late fees, which under the 1927 rate of 2 cents per day would have amounted to more than $550 by now. Instead, they issued a news release on Friday.

Library spokeswoman Kathleen Hirooka said that even the 78-year absence is still well short of the Oakland record for returning a missing library book. The record was set in 1995 when "Ghetto Comedies" by Israel Zangwill was returned 88 years after it was checked out from the Oakland Free Library in 1907. A local contractor discovered the book in a house he was refurbishing. No late fees were assessed in that case either.

Pavon said he is not upset about not setting a city record for the late return of a book. "We had it 78 years -- I'm ready to give it up," he said. "That's as much time as you need to read about anything. It's time to pass it on."